Profiles of access and appropriation of ICT in freshmen students. Comparative study in two Argentine public universities.

Abstract

This work show the results of a study on access profiles and appropriation of ICT in freshmen university students, in two public management universities in Argentina. Nowadays, young people have become more visual than ever and have incorporated several screens to their activities with which they interact constantly, although the skills developed are not always the required in academic contexts. For data collection 516 students were administered a questionnaire, designed ad hoc. For the analysis, the clustering procedure was applied to classify the cases into groups according to the similarity between them, in certain previously chosen variables. A similar profile was observed in both groups regarding the possibilities of access to technology, as well as a prevalence of perceived competencies for non-academic uses. In both group two clusters could be identified, which would account for two levels of competencies. On the other hand, within these clusters a great diversity of appropiation profiles was evident. In spite of these similarities, certain differences were observed in the perceived competencies for academic purposes, which would be associated with different proposals for ICT uses promoted from the context by teachers..